In digital marketing, many strategists focus on written content, keywords, and backlinks as the primary tools to boost their rankings on search engines.
However, one often-overlooked yet powerful element in SEO strategy is image optimization. Images, when used and optimised correctly, can play a part in improving your website’s visibility, user engagement, and even search engine rankings.
Why Images Matter for SEO
Images are much more than just visuals to break up text on a page as they serve several crucial SEO functions that directly impact your site’s visibility.
User Experience (UX)
User experience is a critical ranking factor, and images play a key role in improving how visitors interact with your website. High-quality images that are relevant to the page make the content more engaging, easier to digest, and can convey ideas faster than text.
Good images will keep users engaged with your content for longer, meaning their sessions will be longer, avoiding a bounce. By keeping your users for longer, this signals to Google that your content is valuable.
Increased Engagement & Shareability
Compelling images boost social shares and engagement. When users share your content on social platforms, it generates valuable backlinks and increases your site’s exposure, indirectly benefiting your SEO.
Infographics, charts, or visually appealing graphics can be particularly effective at encouraging sharing, making your content go further.
Image Search Traffic
Google Image Search is another source of organic traffic. Optimising your images increases the likelihood of appearing in image search results, offering a new channel to attract visitors to your website.
According to recent trends, more users are relying on image searches to find products, information, or inspiration, making this a vital traffic source for ecommerce websites, blogs, and informational sites alike.
Keyword Opportunities
By adding images to your content, you can add keywords into their code to highlight what the images are about.
Search engines are smart enough to read images (yet), so they require your help to understand what the images are about. By adding a small description including your target keyword into the alt text, you are giving more information to search engines into what your content is about.
Best Practices for Optimising Images for SEO
As previously mentioned, you can leverage images to your avantage to get more out of your SEO strategy. Here is how you can optimise your images to help improve visibility.
Use Keyword-Rich File Names
Before you upload an image to your platform, rename the file to something descriptive and relevant to your content.
Instead of uploading a generic “IMG_1234.jpg” file, rename it to something specific like “red-racing-car.jpg.” Use your target keyword in a natural way to describe the image and its purpose, helping search engines understand the context of the visual.
Optimise Image Alt Text
Alt text is one of the most important elements of image SEO. Similar to file names, alt texts are used by search engines to understand the content of an image and by screen readers to describe images for visually impaired users.
Write a descriptive alt text that incorporates relevant keywords in a natural way. For example, “Brand new red race car with black wheels” is a good way to provide context while using key terms.
Choose the Right Image Format
Different image formats serve different purposes, and choosing the correct one can influence your site’s performance.
JPEGs – Generally best for photos because they maintain high quality while keeping file sizes small.
PNGs – Ideal for images requiring transparency or logos, but they tend to be larger in file size so be aware.
WebP – An emerging format that offers high-quality images with smaller file sizes, which can further enhance your site’s speed.
Compress Images Without Losing Quality
As briefly mentioned, it’s important to keep image file sizes to a minimum. This does no mean resolution size, but instead the size of memory that the image requires to load.
Large image files slow down page loading times, affecting both user experience and SEO rankings. Use image compression tools (like TinyPNG or Squoosh) to reduce file sizes
Make Images Mobile-Friendly
With mobile-first indexing now the norm, it’s essential that your images are responsive and adapt well to different screen sizes.
Before posting your content live, test how your content will look on mobile to ensure they load quickly and look ok. Responsive images improve user experience and keep mobile visitors engaged, which in turn benefits your rankings.